Poll finds Sanders closing in on Clinton

Sen. Bernie Sanders is just 12 percentage points behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, according to a new online poll.

While the poll has a 6-percentage-point margin of error, it highlights Sanders’s strength as a liberal insurgent against Clinton.

{mosads}Forty-four percent of Granite State Democratic primary voters back Clinton, who won the state’s primary in 2008, according to poll by Morning Consult. But 32 percent support Sanders, the independent senator from neighboring Vermont. The next closest potential candidate, Vice President Biden, came in third with support from 8 percent of Democratic primary voters.

The poll was conducted online and by phone between May 31 and June 8, just before Clinton gave her first major stump speech at her rally in New York City. Online polls require the survey-taker to affirmatively opt in to the poll, so they are typically considered less representative than those that rely on a completely random sample.

Clinton typically holds a tremendous lead over the field in the vast majority of polls. Other Morning Consult polls released at the same time as the New Hampshire poll show Clinton with a commanding lead in Iowa and South Carolina.

Recent New Hampshire polling has shown Sanders garnering around 14 percent support in the polls, compared to Clinton’s 51 percent, according to a RealClearPolitics average.

But Sanders has seen some momentum for his long-shot bid since he announced in April. He finished 7 percentage points behind Clinton in a straw poll of Wisconsin Democratic convention-goers in June.